(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Data center efficiency measures such as PUE have helped emphasize the importance of reducing energy consumption, but should not be used to compare one data center to another, said nonprofit organization The Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org) at online event, Next Generation Data Center summit on Thursday.
The online summit featured presentations by industry representatives who provided real life examples of NGDC implementation, best practice considerations, and new technologies that impact the data center.
The event also covered the applications and technology that support and integrate energy efficient practices, including storage, servers, networking and communications.
The Green Grid developed PUE as a way to measure how much electricity a data center consumes.
However, comparing PUEs between data centers could be misleading because PUE is purely a “relational metric” and is “not meant to be used as a comparison between data centers,” according to Vic Smith, EMEA data centre strategist at Dell, and a senior member of the Green Grid.
Smith says that PUE does not measure the amount of productive work a data center accomplishes, or its level of availability. Still, Smith says he is thrilled to see that many data center operators are making it a point to mention their low PUE scores.
The event featured speakers from many companies, including Sun Microsystems, the British Computer Society and Brocade.
The speakers discussed potential solutions to improving the energy efficiency of data centers, the EU code of conduct on data centers, and future carbon reduction regulations.
NGDC is currently offering all the presentations on its website, and says it plans to have other summits in the future.
